*A Collection of
Antiquarian Curios & Relics*
"For most
of history, Anonymous was a woman . . ."
--Virginia Woolf
HARRY
POTTER & THE CUCKOO'S CALLING (BOOK 8)
So I walk down
the street to Double D's house, stroll up to his porch, and pound on his front
door. I can see the curtains move off to the side in the front window and
then slide back into place. Dressed in her usual attire of lime-green
robe, hair curlers, fuzzy bunny slippers, and a Pall Mall unfiltered cigarette
dangling from her lower lip, Doctor Delay's mom opens the door and motions for
me to come in.
I ask in my best Eddie Haskell voice,
"Hi, Mrs. D. Is Double D here?"
She exhales a cloud of smoke,
"Yeah, Bill. He's downstairs getting ready for his busy day."
"Thanks Mrs. D.," I say
as I scurry past her into the kitchen.
I take the stairs two at a time
into the basement. At the bottom landing, I nearly stumble on the last
step and land face first on the floor. I'm flabbergasted. There are
rows of giant computers with mulit-colored blinking lights lining every wall of
his basement. There are ribbons of white tape regurgitating from some of
the machines, and digital reels are whirling around in circles on other
ones.
Double D sits at a half
circular desk and he's on the phone, "I swear J.K. Rowling wrote The
Cuckoo's Calling (9780316206846) 26.00. No, I'm not some kind of
crank. I've analyzed word selection, sentence structure, and
syntax. It's definitely Rowling. Hey, I don't care what the
back cover says. I can't find any record of a Robert Galbraith . . ."
"Dude, did someone sell you
the set from Lost in Space?"
Double D covers the phone
receiver with one hand, "Dude, good one. Hang on, I'm talking long
distance with someone at the Sunday Times about J.K. Rowling."
I start thumbing through the
stack of books on his desk. There's a copy of Brad Thor's Hidden Order
(9781476717098) 27.99. Hmmm, terrorists again. Man, I miss the
old days when the Commies were the bad guys. Or Nazis. Nazis were
great boogeymen. The next title is This Town (9780399161308) 27.95
by chief national correspondent for New York Times Magazine, Mark
Leibovich. From the backflap, it sounds like everyone in Washington, D.C.
is a millionaire politician or lobbyist. Who says crime doesn't
pay? I look at the cover of his next book.
"Dude, are you reading
Danielle Steel's First Sight (9780385338301) 28.00?"
He covers the phone receiver
again, "Wha? Oh, no. Dude, that's my mom's book. These
jerks at the Sunday Times have got me on hold . . ."
"So what's up with the
computers?"
The Doctor explains, "Dude,
they're NASA surplus computers. I got a great deal on them. And
NASA is really hard up for cash. So I've been putting them to good use by
investigating the similarities of various authors' writing styles. I
think I'm about to break the biggest story in literature since the Bachman
books."
I shake my head, "Dude, you
really need a hobby."
Odds
& Sods
For the ChillersTM fans out there, we are expecting Jonathan
Rand's Michigan Chillers #16: Catastrophe in Caseville (9781893699472)
5.99 to arrive today. Back orders have been piling up . . .
We are expecting
Sleeping Bear Press' reprint of Kathy-Jo Wargin's The Legend of Sleeping
Bear (9781886947351) 17.95 to ship from the publisher on Friday. Our
stock should arrive here by Wednesday . . .
Sleeper Alert: You might want to keep an eye on Aslan Reza's Zealot: The Life & Times of Jesus of Nazareth (9781400069224) 27.00. Heavenly books sell well . . .
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